Phishing is the attempt to acquire sensitive data—such as credit card numbers, login credentials, social security numbers—for malicious reasons by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication such as email or text message. Such trustworthy entities may include banks (Chase, HSBC . . . ), online payment services (PayPal . . . ), email service providers (Gmail, Yahoo!, British Telecom, T-Online . . . ), social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn . . . ) and e-commerce websites (Amazon, Alibaba . . . ), to name but a few.
The phishing scam takes place in several consecutive steps. Herein, the worst-case scenario is assumed, in that the victim is trapped by the phishing scam. The sequence of events leading to this bad outcome may include the following:
1. The phisher sets up a counterfeited website. This counterfeited website mimics a selected, well-known and legitimate website. This counterfeited website is configured to capture sensitive data of the victims.
2. The phisher initiates a phishing campaign by a chosen electronic communication modality (email, text message, instant messaging, etc.). The phishing message contain a message designed to prompt the victim to click on a fraudulent Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which leads the victim to the counterfeited website.
3. The victim receives the phishing message and clicks on the fraudulent URL. The victim's browser opens the counterfeited website and the victim submits the requested sensitive data to the counterfeited website, thinking that it is the legitimate website that it mimics.
4. The fraudulent website forwards the submitted and captured sensitive data to the phisher, typically to a mailbox previously set up by the phisher to receive such captured sensitive data.
To thwart phishing attacks, the industry, including security vendors, web browser vendors, internet service providers, email service providers, wireless communications service providers, has developed different technologies. Most of these technologies can be classified in two categories:                Electronic communication (email, text message, instant messaging, etc.) related technologies: these technologies attempt to detect phishing attacks by analyzing the inbound and/or outbound electronic communication traffic. Various methods are used to detect the phishing attacks, such as anti-phishing email filtering technologies used by email service providers (Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, AT&T, Comcast, British Telecom, Vodafone, Orange and the like) to protect their customers. These email service providers develop their own technologies and/or use existing technologies provided by email security vendors such as Spamhaus, Cloudmark, Cyren or Vade Secure.        Web-related technologies, which attempt to detect phishing webpages by analyzing the webpage itself. Typical of such approach are anti-phishing technologies available in web browsers, such as Google Safe Browsing for Google Chrome or SmartScreen for Microsoft Edge.        
In most cases, a phishing attack is an attempt to capture login credentials (often, login and password) inputted by the user as he or she tries to connect to what is believed to be a trusted website. The fact that the end user submits such sensitive data as a password in an unknown context is highly suspicious. The phishing problem relies on the user's inattention and the casualness with which most users provide their credentials upon demand. Rather than attempting to change the user's behavior, what is needed is a technological solution to the technological problem of bad actors setting up fraudulent websites to prey on their victims. Such a technological solution should leverage the user's own computing device and its connection to computer networks such as the Internet, to address and thwart efforts to steal confidential user credentials.